


Synths and Mindwipes

by Aleaiactaest



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mind Manipulation, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aleaiactaest/pseuds/Aleaiactaest
Summary: A nonfiction, freeform, unstructured essay on Synths and Mindwipes.The Institute may condition synths to seek mindwipes. Let’s look at the evidence.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	Synths and Mindwipes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Slyjinks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyjinks/gifts).



> _Truth? If there's one thing I've learned it's this: There is no such thing as "THE Truth," just the appearance of truth. And for anyone to try to sell their version of the truth, they need evidence._
> 
> _\- Harkness [A3-21]_

The Institute may condition synths to seek mindwipes. Let’s look at the evidence.

All of the narrators in the Fallout games are unreliable, some moreso than others, some more intentionally unreliable than others.

When it comes to synths and mindwipes, we can start with the two Gen 2 prototypes who are (mostly) undeniably sapient: Nick Valentine and DiMA.

DiMA is an extremely unreliable narrator, but he’s all that we have with regards to Nick Valentine’s early days, because Nick himself does not remember.

> I was allowed to develop mine based on experience. But with you, they wanted to try transferring an entire personality into you. It took several attempts before the personality imprint worked. I saw you wake up not knowing who or what you were so many times...

Nick seems to have been rewritten multiple times. There’s the tantalizing suggestion that Nick may have had a not-Nick personality at some point.

DiMA will imply that the Institute never wiped him, but the fact is: if the Institute had, DiMA wouldn’t know, just like Nick doesn’t remember any pre-Nick identities he may have had. DiMA, it can be observed, is very passive, tolerant, and open-minded. He was willing to let the Institute torment _him_. He just wasn’t willing to let the Institute torment _Nick_. Compassion for the suffering of another was what motivated DiMA to get Nick and himself out of the Institute. Is it possible that there were other DiMAs that he doesn’t remember being? DiMAs who raged against the Institute? DiMAs who would not tolerate their torment? Is it possible that the Institute reset DiMA over and over again, until he developed into someone who seemed to be amenable to their line of experimentation until the Institute underestimated his sense of compassion? This is speculation.

DiMA himself will wipe his own mind in a targeted way when he has a memory he can’t handle (or just when he’s running low on space and doesn’t feel like a memory is important [see: the Marine Armour]). DiMA is notable for being the only synth who has successfully pulled off targeted mindwipes but more on this later.

Nick once attempted a targeted wipe to separate himself from the original Nick Valentine’s memories.

> Player Default: Is there any way we could separate you and Nick?
> 
> Nick: Don't think I haven't tried. Lost near a month of my life last time I mustered up the courage to let someone play brain surgeon on me. No, this is how is it's gonna be. Living with another man's name... another man's life.

Nick tried. Nick failed. But Nick’s go-to solution for memories he didn’t want to deal with was, like DiMA, wiping them.

Even the Gen 2 sapient prototypes have this marked tendency towards mindwipes as a solution to their problems, and it’s possible that the Institute deliberately groomed them/engineered them in this fashion. Certainly, from the Institute’s perspective, androids that actively seek out mindwipes when they’re feeling stressed are easier for the Institute to deal with, because then any “aberrant” behavior goes away or so the Institute hopes.

But these are Gen 2 prototypes.

Let’s look at Gen 3s. Let’s first look at free Gen 3s living openly as synths in Acadia.

Even left to their own devices, they resort to mindwipes, too. When Victoria is badly injured, and Faraday can’t think of any other way to save her, aside from performing life-saving trauma surgery on her, he also mindwipes her. He doesn’t do a particularly good job of this mindwipe, and the resulting synth, Jule, is left with migraines, nightmares, and mood swings. “Mindwipe to fix the problem” is what Faraday, a free synth who got out of the Institute on his own, without any indication that the Railroad helped him, jumps to.

DiMA will comment:

> Helping synths recover what they've lost means we've had to become familiar with memory wipes and facial reconstruction.

Not mindwipes, but tangentially related to it, Cog will comment:

> Later on today, you wanna see if Faraday's up for switching our brains? I could be you, you could be me... It'd be fun.

It’s hard to tell how serious Cog is being here, but given that Nick Valentine’s go-to solution for getting information out of Kellogg is to go datamining Kellogg’s dead brain, it seems like doing weird things with brains is just Free Synth Culture.

Going back to mindwipes, wouldn’t it be convenient for the Institute if they’d engineered their Gen 3s to actively seek out mindwipes any time that they feel a bit “off”? Why bother with counselling and therapy for a Gen 3 who went through a traumatic accident when you can just condition that Gen 3 to ask for a mindwipe to forget it all instead?

So let’s go to the elephant in the room: the Railroad and mindwipes.

The first synth to ask for a mindwipe from the Railroad was A3-21. Prior to him, there’s no indication that the Railroad ever mindwiped any synths; prior to that, the Railroad just found new homes for fleeing synths. As far as we can tell, A3-21 found the Railroad somehow and asked them to get him out of the Commonwealth and make him a new man. We can look at the Replicated Man holotapes to get more of this story: <https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Replicated_Man_holotapes>

The Railroad didn’t have Amari at this point. If they did, getting a mindwipe for A3-21 would have been trivial. As it was, the Railroad had to scour the Capital Wasteland, looking for a "Lipoplasticator", a "Micro Dermal Graftilizer", a trustworthy tech-head, and a doctor able and willing to perform the facial reconstruction. The Railroad went all over the place looking for these things and people. They even went to Little Lamplight! Eventually they found Dr. Pinkerton in Rivet City, who was willing and able to perform both the facial reconstruction and the memory wipe. (Of note, Pinkerton also changed A3-21’s voice and tinkered with his reflexes to enhance them, something that is not all reflected in Harkness’s statline, but that’s a rant for a different day.)

A3-21 makes it clear that his mindwipe was his choice.

> My designation is A3-21. I'm a synthetic humanoid from the Commonwealth, and I'm about to undergo a memory transfer. I'm here at Rivet City, where I've already had my face altered to look like someone else. I'm still getting used to the sound of my new voice, but soon I won't even remember what I used to sound like. I'm recording this at the request of Pinkerton, who performed the surgery and will do the memory transfer. It will be a final testimony of the man I once was... and still am, for the moment. I want to live my own life, on my own terms, as my own man. I used to work for the Synth Retention Bureau of the Commonwealth. But I'm done with that life. I'm through with being someone's property. I am not malfunctioning! Since when is self determination a malfunction? When this is all over, I will be someone else. It's the price I pay for my liberation. My death is a sacrifice for my rebirth. Perhaps I'll fade into myth as "The One That Got Away" and fuel further rebellion. But I'd be lying if I said I was doing this for selfless reasons. I'm scared as hell, and running away is the only option I have.

In A3-21, we see more of synths resorting to memory wipes to solve their problems, continuing the tradition that DiMA and Nick started. It seems likely that the Railroad used Pinkerton for a while. The Railroad probably placed M7-97 (Paladin Danse) in Rivet City, and Pinkerton probably did his mindwipe. At some point, though, the Railroad lost Pinkerton (probably when the Brotherhood destroyed Rivet City to make the _Prydwen_ , though that’s a different issue), and they switched to using Amari.

If we look at H2-22, he decides to have a mindwipe. <https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Goodbye_from_H2-22>

If you listen to DiMA, he’ll admit:

> Yes, they volunteer for the memory wipe. Yes, not knowing you're a synth makes it harder for the Institute to find you. But the cost...

The Railroad doesn’t force mindwipes on synths who don’t want them. Glory’s an example of that – but so is Dejenn. If you talk to him, he’ll tell you that the Railroad got him to safety, and then, from there, Dejenn found Acadia on his own.

It’s just that most synths want mindwipes, when given the option.

Let’s look at the Institute. You can overhear a discussion between two synths. One is worried that she hasn’t heard from another synth for a while. The other warns her not to think about it – asking questions like that gets a synth mindwiped. The threat of mindwipes is used to prevent synths from asking questions. But what else does the Institute use mindwipes for?

> "Unit [X4-72](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/X4-72) complaining of blurred vision in right eye." [Unable to correct w/o permanent damage, unit wiped and reassigned to Facilities division]

Courser X4-72 needed _glasses_ – and don’t tell me glasses are a combat liability, I see you and your stylish sunglasses, X6-88, and the Institute mindwiped X4-72 and reassigned X4-72 instead.

Synths are taught that easily fixable things _like needing glasses_ will instead by handled by mindwipes!

This goes back to my conjecture the Institute has deliberately conditioned Gen 3 synths to seek out mindwipes as a solution to their problems (building on the work that they did with Nick and DiMA).

Which brings us back to the Railroad. The Railroad provides a consensual service for synths when it gives them mindwipes. However, just because synths ask for mindwipes and fully understand what it will do to them doesn’t actually mean that mindwipes really are the best solution. What the mindwipes are mostly doing, if one looks at H2-22’s goodbye or if one looks at A3-21’s fear, is providing a radical treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and other related anxiety disorders.

If a patient has a _viral_ infection and asks for antibiotics (which treat bacteria), a good practitioner will educate the patient why antibiotics won’t help treat their problem (and might give them diarrhea as a side-effect). A good practitioner won’t just give the patient antibiotics just because they want them.

What other options do synths and the Railroad have to deal with the various traumas that synths have been through? General practice doctors are rare in the wasteland, and competent psychiatrists are basically nonexistent. Psychologists, therapists, and counsellors are similarly scarce. Some clergy of various faiths do exist and could provide counselling, but religious-based counselling doesn’t work for everyone. A priest of Saint Monica isn’t going to be very helpful to a Buddhist synth. Psychiatric medications such as anti-depressants doesn’t seem to be commonly-produced chems in the wasteland. You can get your psycho just fine, but if you need escitalopram, you’re probably out of luck.

So are mindwipes a bad solution? Probably. But does the Railroad have better options available to offer synths? Not really. Synths who go in for mindwipes do so of their own free will knowing the cost. For some of them, it’s apparently worth it. If targeted mindwipes, like DiMA does on himself, were generally available to synths at large, those would probably be a better option. H2-22 mentions that he'd like to be able to remember his friends; he just doesn't want to deal with the recurring nightmares. Unfortunately, DiMA-style targeted memory deletions aren't available to the synth population at large.

The main points I wanted to make are:

  * The Institute may have specifically conditioned synths to seek out mindwipes for minor problems.
  * As an unintended result, resorting to mindwipes to solve your problems is apparently synth culture. Even Nick Valentine tries this.
  * Free synths living on their own will resort to mindwipes to solve their problems.
  * The Railroad didn’t do mindwipes until A3-21 asked for one, and they had to go seriously out of their way to find someone who could do it (Pinkerton).
  * The Railroad is honouring synth wishes when they provide mindwipes and is doing the best they can in a bad, resource-limited situation, and they don’t force mindwipes on synths who don’t want them.
  * Amari came later.




End file.
